All I Need
by chocolatequeen
Summary: The Doctor is finally with Rose again. In a parallel universe, but being with Rose was all he needed. Now to convince her of that fact. Post Journey's End conversation, the start of a new series.


The Doctor needed Rose Tyler. It was one of the basic facts of the universe—of _every_ universe. Water is wet, bananas are good, and the Doctor needs Rose Tyler.

It was so universally acknowledged that the Time Lord had used the fact only a few hours before to convince Rose that he was the Doctor. "He needs you—that's very me." And then he'd finally gotten the chance to give Rose the words that _she_ needed, and his reward had been feeling her lips against his for the first time in almost four years.

Even holding her hand as they'd watched their home disappear back to the prime universe had felt like magic. He was here, and she was here, and when she rubbed her thumb over his in an absent-minded caress, he'd felt like he had everything he could possibly want.

The Doctor needed Rose Tyler, but shortly after dinner, she'd disappeared. The hotel room they'd been given was empty, and she wasn't with her mum. That left the village or the beach, and it only took him a few minutes staring out the window to decide to look for her.

It did occur to him as he left the hotel that maybe she wanted to be alone, and he should let her come back in her own time. But instincts honed in three years of travelling with Rose, and six months as her lover, were prodding him to go after her.

His empty hand twitched at his side as he walked down the steps to the beach. Now that he was alone again, doubts were creeping into his mind. The Time Lord had manipulated Rose into making this decision, and he'd helped. Would she have chosen to stay in Pete's World if he hadn't answered her question?

When he found her on the beach, staring out at the open sea, the knots in his stomach tightened. The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, quickly doing calculations. The walls between the worlds hadn't fully sealed yet. If he could get his hands on one of those hoppers Jackie and Mickey had used to follow Rose… The thought of sending her back, of being in this world without her, made him sick—but so did the thought of trapping her here.

He approached her slowly, watching the way the changing colours of the setting sun cast shades of pink and purple on her blonde hair. She was so beautiful it made his one heart ache. Seeing her again had been all he'd wanted since the moment she'd fallen to this universe, and it was better than he'd dreamed.

But if she didn't want to be with him…

Rose's head turned as he approached, not quite looking at him, but enough that he knew she heard him coming. When he was finally standing beside her on the edge of the beach, she sighed and shoved her hands into her pockets.

"I've trapped you here."

The soft confession mirrored the Doctor's own thoughts so perfectly that it took him a moment to realise it was Rose talking. "What?" he asked, rather stupidly, but he couldn't process the idea that he would be anything less than thrilled to be where Rose was.

She looked up at him then, and oh, he recognised the guilt in her eyes. It was the same expression that stared back at him when he looked in the mirror.

"It's not quite a planet in orbit around a black hole, but there's no way out," she said, her quiet words almost drowned out by the sound of waves crashing against the nearby rocks. "The dimension cannon only worked because of the reality bomb, and now that we've stopped that…" She wrapped her arms around herself. "I've trapped you here."

The Doctor mirrored her position, turning a quarter turn away from the water and putting his hands in his pockets. The wind coming off the ocean cut straight through his blue suit, but he didn't feel the chill. His heart beat wildly; if she felt guilty, maybe she _didn't_ feel trapped.

He remembered their conversations on Krop Tor, and he knew how to reassure her. He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and hummed in agreement. "I suppose I'll have to get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe."

A furrow creased Rose's brow, and he clenched his hands into fists in his pockets to keep himself from reaching out to smooth it away. He could place the exact moment she realised what he was doing, and the fragile hope in her eyes brought a smile to his lips.

"I don't have a mortgage, but I do have a flat… we could share?"

She bit her lower lip, and he finally lost the battle to keep from touching her. When a strand of hair blew into her face, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and brushed it back over her ear. The way Rose leaned into the familiar caress made his heart stop for several seconds, and when it finally started again, he realised he'd been daring enough to trail his hand down her arm and lace his fingers together with hers.

"Well…" he drawled. "I certainly don't plan to live anywhere you aren't. I think we've done enough of that for a lifetime, don't you?"

Rose laughed breathlessly. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

"So I'm very interested in this flat of yours. But." He pulled his other hand out of his pocket. "I have another option, if you're interested?"

Rose watched the Doctor toss something up in the air, and her eyes widened when she realised what it was. She caught the chunk of coral, and when she wrapped her fingers around it, she could almost hear the familiar song in her head.

"How… when…"

"He and Donna gave it to me, while we were busy flying the Earth back," the Doctor said quietly. "Gave me very specific instructions on how to speed up the growth process—we should have a fully functional TARDIS in just a few years."

The coral cut into Rose's fingers when they spasmed around the bit of TARDIS. "He gave… you _knew_?"

The Doctor frowned for a second, then his eyes widened and he shook his head quickly. "No. Oh, no love, I wouldn't have kept his plans from you if I'd known. But it isn't safe for two regenerations of the same Time Lord to be in the same place for long, so I knew he would drop me off somewhere. This was his way of making sure that I—that we—could have a life as much like what we were used to as possible."

The vise that had clenched around Rose's heart eased, and she was able to look at the piece of TARDIS coral as the gift it was. "So we won't be stuck on Earth, anyway," she mused as she handed it back.

He raised an eyebrow as he slid it back into his pocket. "Stuck with you, that's not so bad."

Rose smiled up at the Doctor and shifted a few inches closer to him. "Yeah?" She placed her hand on his chest and frowned for a second when there was no tie for her to grab, but feeling his single heart through the thin t-shirt brought the smile back to her face.

The Doctor's hands landed on her hips, and his thumbs slipped under her coat and shirt to brush the bare skin above her waistband "Yes," he said firmly. "Rose Tyler…"

His voice trailed off, and Rose's heart raced. "Yes, Doctor?" Her hand slid up his chest to rest at the nape of his neck, and she could feel his breathing speed up at the touch.

He swallowed hard a few times, and Rose watched his Adam's apple bob. "I missed you so much, love," he confessed, his voice hoarse. "I know he manoeuvred both of us into staying here together, but you need to know that if I had been given the choice between spending a life here with you, and spending it without you anywhere else, there would have been no contest. I would choose you, in any time, in any universe." A smile quirked up the corners of his mouth. "Even if we couldn't have our own TARDIS."

"Doctor," Rose breathed. The Doctor had always had a gob, and she'd imagined more than once what kind of romantic speeches he might give if he ever got over his reluctance to say he loved her. This was better than any of her dreams, though.

She cleared her throat; his reassurances reminded her that he might have doubts of his own. "I'm glad we have the TARDIS, because I've missed travelling with you. But you're all I need. Living a life with you, having that adventure… It's everything I ever wanted."

The Doctor leaned down and brushed his nose against hers as he whispered three precious words in the space between them. Time stretched around them the way it always did when they kissed, and as Rose tilted her head back and repeated the words against his lips, she thought she caught a glimpse of their future. Two hearts, one life, and a love that would always bring them home.


End file.
